Pretty Little Thing
by redlettergirl
Summary: "This was a riot that was half over the sorceresses, and apparently, this girl /was/ a sorceress. She just wasn't acting like it. Not until they took out her boyfriend." Rated T for violence.


In reality, there should have been no witness reports. Not the way the place was when we found it. It looked like a freaking tornado had hit it, or an earthquake, but once all these half-busted up people started coming out of the woodwork—covered with eye-patches and casts and neck braces and shit—with their "witness testimony", it started to look like something much, much worse had happened there. Personally, I like to believe that all of what they said is bullshit. I have to. If any of it's true . . . I've got kids back at home, man. Let's just leave it at that.

But you still want to know? Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is basically what I heard. After Edea and Adel finally met their maker, some people weren't too happy with the sorceresses, or with Galbadia Garden for helping them out. So what do they do? Well, in Deling, they apparently decided to riot. In their own town. Never accuse people of being smart, I say.

Now, that probably would've been the best time for SeeD to stay the hell away from Deling, but they've never been known to turn down cold, hard cash. With as much as the Deling's puppet mayor was supposedly offering to pay them, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd teleported there. Anyway, hiring them to manage crowd control turned out to be the bad idea of the century, because once they got there, things just got worse. After all, people were also rioting over Galbadia Garden, and to the good majority, a SeeD is a SeeD is a SeeD, no matter what Garden they say they're from.

Those poor SeeD bastards were in over their heads. People were coming at them with wood axes and kitchen knives and sawed off shotguns and shit. It was all pretty barbaric, from what I heard. One of the other clean-up crews said they found some poor guy nailed to a post with his face and crotch all torn up. Pretty fucking sick, city folk can be.

But apparently, it didn't start getting "bad" until right about then. See, there was this standoff going on in some residential district. Bunch of SeeDs propped up behind machines and tanks and stuff, fighting against a group of civilians who'd apparently ransacked the arms shop.

Now, this is the part where I think people are bullshitting. This next thing, people swear they saw it, but I seriously doubt they were paying that close attention. It was only important in hindsight, you know? I mean, who is seriously going to be giving their full and complete to some random SeeD in the middle of a firefight? Bunch of crap if you asked me. But this is what's on the reports, so whatever. This is what you get.

So there's this one SeeD down there in the middle of the action, screaming into his communicator. Apparently, this guy was a commanding officer. No, no, _the_ commanding officer, they said. They recognized him. Like, this was apparently the guy who ran all of Balamb. You know that kid. He and his friends were all over the papers a few years ago. Brown hair, nasty scar between his eyes, mean face? Yeah, him. Still doesn't make me believe that whoever the hell was watching out their window could pick him out of the crowd, but whatever. So, this kid is screaming into his communicator, saying God knows what. A couple people said they thought he was calling a retreat, but being able to know that is a bunch of bullshit if I ever heard it. These people were about three stories up, so there's no way in fuck that they heard this guy, down there on the ground, when even the people on the other end of his radio couldn't hear him. My guess is that they said that so what happened next would seem even more tragic.

So—and I don't know what happened exactly, don't ask—the kid apparently stuck his head a little too high over the shield. Like, a bullet hit the shield in front of him, so he jumped back and stood up a little too high or something. Anyway, something smacked the kid right between the eyes and he went down like an oak. It might've been kind of a funny picture, if whatever hit him hadn't popped the back of his head like a grape.

It's kind of sad to think about, really. This was one of the kids that got rid of the sorceresses in the first place. Survived all that crap, just so he could go down in some meaningless firefight in some alley in some city full of unappreciative shits like the people on the other side of that shield. Damn shame, really.

Apparently, someone else thought so, too: this girl there. Well, there were a bunch of girls there—SeeDs are apparently split pretty even that way—but this girl's important to the story. I guess she was one of those kids who beat the sorceresses, too. Cute little Galbadian thing. Long black hair and a pretty face, daughter of a general, et cetera. Lots of stories going around about her right now. Like, she and the commander kid apparently had something going on, and he'd wanted her to sit that mission out. Couple of rumors flying around that she'd snuck onto the ship over, and the two of them had a fight over it. You know, bunch of chick bullshit. You don't care.

Anyhow, commander kid goes down, and this girl sees it. Freaks the fuck out. Runs over and starts casting Cure and shit on him, and he just lays there like a log. Pretty sad, actually. Poor things.

Now, the story probably should've ended right there. Battle goes on, more people die, others get arrested, we come in and clean up the mess. But no. _That's_ when it got bad. 'Cause see, apparently this girl wasn't what we'd call normal, and the commander kid had had a very good reason for not wanting her to come. This was a riot that was half over the sorceresses, and apparently, this bitch _was_ a sorceress. She just wasn't acting like it. Not until they took out her boyfriend.

She started getting attention right about then, when all the sudden she grew a pair of wings. No, I don't know what the fuck these witness people were smoking, but apparently they were all smoking it at the same time, because _every single one of them_ mentioned these wings. Maybe it was the battle fumes they were all huffing. Whatever. Anyway, she grows these wings, pretty little angel wings, and everyone gets real confused, real fast. The other side starts shooting at her, because most of them have put two and two together and decided that wings are pretty damn magical.

I'll spare you the fine details of what happened next, since they're pretty fucking gruesome. Let's just say that she went a little crazy. Actually, fucking ballistic is more like it. She just blasts through the shield—kills a bunch of fucking SeeDs on her way, too—and just goes to town on the other guys. Just blast after blast of magic, completely decimates these guys. She hit a couple of the buildings, too, which means she was to blame for at least a couple dozen civilian casualties on that street.

So, fast forward, she's done. Everything on that street is charcoal, except the commander kid. We've got a couple of witnesses saying that she fell on him and just started crying her little murdering eyes out, but at that point, most of our witnesses were out of commission.

If you believe it, the whole situation just got worse from there. By the time things had calmed down enough for the regular city police to start coming out of their donut shops and taking care of anyone still resisting, the girl was gone. And if you can believe it, she took the commander kid with her. Now, this sorceress bitch, she's apparently tiny. Garden records on her say so. Commander kid? Fucking beast compared to her, and completely dead weight. But she apparently still had it in her to drag him away from there all on her own, through the wreckage and what was basically a field of corpses.

Worst part of that was that there were apparently still people rioting on other streets when she took off. We know that because there was a fucking bread crumb trail of destruction through Deling, and a ton of corpses with that stink of magic on them.

That's how they know she went to the train station. That, and she blew up the ticket office, fourteen-year-old ticket taker and all. They're pretty sure she got on—there were one or two chubby businessmen who'd seen her go, all red-faced, still dragging that poor kid's body—but they're not sure where she got off. Actually, they're not even sure where the train is. They're still looking for it.

Hey man, you asked. I warned you, but you wanted to know. Ah hell, you were probably gonna hear it anyway. SeeD's already making formal apologies and conducting investigations and shit. I've gotta say, they're in a pretty tight spot right now. I mean, one of their own turns out to be another bloodthirsty sorceress. Yeah, they've definitely got a shitload of bad press on their hands. Poor bastards. Gotta deal with it without their commander, too.

Don't tell anybody, but I kind of feel bad for the girl. Little bit. I mean, she was just a fucking kid. Don't make that face, asshole. She was just a kid. Seriously, look at her picture. It's everywhere. She was just a goddamn kid.

You know, I'd better split. Wife's gonna have a damn shit fit if I'm out late again. And, you know, all of a sudden, I kind of want to see her. And my kids, man. I really—I really want to go see my kids.


End file.
